Aquaculture gathers all the animal or plant production activities in an aquatic medium. Aquaculture is practiced by the sea, in rivers or ponds. Certain systems of artificial reefs or attractor or concentration devices which may be assimilated to aquaculture, from the moment that there exists a direct offer of food or support (indirectly produced from a rise of water loaded with minerals for example). It also relates to the productions of fish (fish farming), of shell fish (shell fish farming), of crustaceans (astaciculture and shrimp farming), abalones (aquiculture), oysters (oyster farming) or further algae (algaculture).
Aquaculture is one of the responses brought to overfishing and to the increasing needs of fish. In 2008, it provided the world with 76.4% of fresh water fish, 68.2% of diadromous fish, 64.1% of molluscs, 46.4% of crustaceans and 2.6% of seawater fish consumed by humans.
It is sometimes used for other motives than food consumption, for example in Europe via many «fish farming stations» built from 1850 to 1870, or in Japan in order to reintroduce into the environment the shrimps or abalones where these animals have been overexploited or have disappeared for other causes (pollution . . . ).
Nowadays, intensification of the production methods and the weather variations have made the development of aquaculture and of oyster farming particularly vulnerable.
The use of probiotics from healthy wild animals is included in a natural bio-protection strategy for aquaculture species. If probiotics are widely used in farming, their use in aquaculture still remains a novelty.
The development of a biological and efficient strategy for protecting these species therefore appears as an undeniable asset for producers and industrialists of animal feeding.
Moreover, renewal of antimicrobial agents is today a priority of public and veterinary health. Their excessive and unsuitable use has led to the selection of multiresistant strains which cause therapeutic dead ends (25,000 deaths/year in the EEC, WHO 2011).
No new family of anti-Gram-negative antibiotic has been marketed for 30 years. The search for novel compounds having antimicrobial properties is therefore primordial and urgent.
In parallel, there also exists today a substantial need in the field of phytosanitary treatments for identifying alternative products, which are not noxious to the environment, but which remain efficient bactericidal agents.